At 230 metres above Guiyang’s city centre, occupying floors 29 to 53 of Guizhou’s tallest skyscraper, Kempinski Hotel Guiyang (贵阳凯宾斯基大酒店) commands one of the most dramatic hotel positions in southwest China. Opened in 2012 and comprehensively refurbished in 2024, this 366-key flagship property brings the full weight of Kempinski’s century-old European luxury tradition to the capital of Guizhou — a province whose remarkable natural landscapes, ancient ethnic cultures and emerging technology economy have transformed it into one of China’s most compelling destinations. Zhobai was appointed to deliver the complete hotel furniture FF&E solution for the 2024 renovation, refurnishing every guest-facing space across guestrooms, suites, lobby, dining, bar and conference facilities to the exacting standards demanded by one of Europe’s oldest and most respected luxury hotel brands.
Project Overview
Kempinski Hotel Guiyang occupies a defining position in the city’s CBD — within five minutes of Guiyang Railway Station, ten minutes from Longtongbao International Airport, and walking distance from the historic Jiaxiu Tower, the Nanming River embankment and the city’s most vibrant commercial districts. Its 366 rooms and suites span 25 floors of a building that is itself a Guiyang landmark, offering panoramic city and river views from every guestroom and reaching its apogee at the 53rd-floor executive lounge and sky bar — at 230 metres, the highest hospitality venue in the province. After twelve years of operation as Guiyang’s premier luxury address, the 2024 refurbishment was designed to reset the hotel’s physical standards for the next decade of service.
The 2024 Renovation Brief
Kempinski’s renovation brief for the Guiyang property had three objectives: to update the hotel’s furniture and material palette to the brand’s current global design standards; to integrate the smart-room technology infrastructure that guests of a 2024 five-star hotel expect — intelligent toilets, projectable televisions, app-based climate and lighting control; and to honour the hotel’s position in Guizhou by introducing subtle local cultural references that differentiate the property from a generic international luxury hotel without undermining Kempinski’s signature European elegance. For Zhobai, this translated into the most technically demanding FF&E specification in the project’s scope: furniture that conceals technology elegantly, performs to commercial standards over a decade of intensive use, and carries local meaning in its materials and detail.
Design Language: European Luxury at Chinese Altitude
Kempinski’s brand design language is rooted in European classical tradition — symmetry, quality of material, precision of craft — reinterpreted through a contemporary lens that avoids period pastiche. For Guiyang, the design team introduced a secondary reference drawn from Guizhou’s extraordinary cultural landscape: the silver jewellery traditions of the Miao people, expressed as fine geometric inlay work in brass and oxidised metal on furniture edges and cabinet fronts; the indigo-dyed textiles of the Buyi ethnic group, interpreted in deep navy accent upholstery; and the dramatic karst topography of the province, reflected in the irregular natural stone surfaces of the lobby and restaurant feature walls. Zhobai’s design team worked from the earliest concept stage to ensure that these cultural references were expressed with restraint and sophistication rather than literal reproduction.
Lobby & Bar Furniture
The hotel’s main lobby — a double-height arrival hall at the base of the tower, opening upward to the elevator banks that carry guests to their sky-high rooms — required furniture that communicates luxury instantly, handles the throughput of a 366-key CBD hotel, and photograph exceptionally well for a property at which Instagram-worthy moments are part of the guest value proposition. Zhobai supplied a custom reception island in book-matched emperador marble with a hand-lacquered cabinetry base in Kempinski’s signature deep navy, brass-capped edge detailing and integrated LED uplighting that casts a warm glow across the stone surface. The lobby lounge seating programme — modular sofas in deep cognac leather, occasional chairs in a navy-and-gold stripe velvet, and low side tables in blackened steel with glass tops — creates a series of conversation zones that feel simultaneously intimate and grand.
Guestroom Furniture Programme
The 366-key guestroom programme spans five floors of the tower above the 29th floor — a vertical hotel in which every room is a high-rise experience. The primary categories are Panoramic Deluxe Rooms, Executive Rooms with lounge access, Deluxe Suites and the 285 m² Presidential Suite on the 53rd floor.
Panoramic Deluxe Rooms (40–45 m²)
The hotel’s entry-level room category starts at 40 square metres — already generous by any standard — with floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the Guiyang cityscape and the Nanming River as a living artwork. Zhobai specified a bed platform in dark-stained walnut with a channel-quilted headboard in a deep navy performance fabric, integrated floating bedside units with wireless charging pads, and a full-width credenza in ebony-toned timber with Miao-inspired brass inlay detailing on the drawer fronts. The writing desk — positioned directly at the window to maximise the city view — is a live-edge walnut slab on a powder-coated steel frame, paired with a Kempinski-standard task chair in navy leather with brass leg caps.
Room Entry & Circulation
Each guestroom entry corridor is furnished as a deliberate arrival sequence — a Kempinski brand standard that Zhobai honoured in every room. A wall-mounted console in dark walnut veneer with a recessed ceramic display surface and a frameless backlit mirror create the first impression. The wardrobe unit opposite — in floor-to-ceiling lacquered cabinetry with push-to-open hardware — conceals the smart-room control panel, safe, iron and minibar within a seamless timber facade that reads as pure furniture rather than a functional cluster of hotel hardware.
Bathroom Furniture
Kempinski’s bathroom standard calls for the double-vanity configuration in all room categories — a decision that drove a significant portion of Zhobai’s custom manufacturing programme. Each bathroom received a wall-hung double-basin vanity in honed Calacatta marble composite with solid brass tap fittings, a frameless LED mirror spanning the full vanity width with touch-sensor colour-temperature control, and a freestanding vanity stool in solid oak with a saddle-leather seat. The intelligent toilet unit is integrated seamlessly within a Zhobai-fabricated timber housing that matches the room’s wardrobe cabinetry finish, ensuring the bathroom’s technology is experienced as a feature rather than an appliance.
Dining Furniture
The hotel’s dining programme spans four distinct venues across multiple floors, each requiring a furniture language calibrated to its service style and guest profile. The flagship Yulongxuan Chinese Restaurant on the second floor — serving premium Cantonese cuisine and Guizhou specialities in an atmosphere of considered ceremony — received Zhobai’s most formal dining furniture: round lacquered tables in dark ebony veneer with hand-turned lazy-susan inserts, high-back dining chairs in a silk-brocade upholstery drawing from traditional Guizhou ceremonial textiles, and private dining room sets with custom cabinet-work in lacquered timber with brass hardware. The VIP dining suites are furnished as complete rooms — console table, credenza, occasional chairs and artwork-lighting shelves — treating the private dining experience with the same furniture thoroughness as a Presidential Suite.
The Elements Western Restaurant — serving a European-Chinese all-day buffet including German specialities, fresh seafood and local Guizhou sour soup — received a contrasting, lighter furniture register: pale oak dining tables with removable inserts for flexible group configuration, bistro-style upholstered chairs in a stripe-weave performance fabric, and a custom buffet counter fabricated by Zhobai’s Guangdong workshop with integrated hot and cold service zones, live cooking stations and a display dessert counter in honed stone composite.
Meeting & Event Spaces
The hotel’s 2,400 m² of meeting and event space — spanning nine multifunctional rooms and a pillar-free 1,000 m² grand ballroom — forms the cornerstone of the hotel’s corporate business. Guiyang’s growing significance as a technology and data industry hub has brought a new tier of international corporate conference business to the city, and the Kempinski’s meeting facilities are central to capturing that market. Zhobai supplied the full conference furniture package: modular conference tables with integrated power and data management channels in dark walnut veneer, executive leather chairs with lumbar adjustment and five-point castor bases, and perimeter credenzas for equipment storage and refreshment staging. The theatre-configuration spaces received Zhobai’s linked lecture chair in a dark navy upholstery with flip-top writing tablet and integrated power point — a configuration that seats up to 200 delegates in a single space without visual clutter.
The Zhobai One-Stop Process
Refurnishing a live, 366-key five-star skyscraper hotel — operational throughout the renovation period — required a project management methodology as disciplined as the hotel’s own service standards. Zhobai’s delivery model ran across four structured phases:
- Design Collaboration & Brand Compliance (Months 1–3): Zhobai’s design team worked directly with the hotel’s interior architects and Kempinski’s global brand standards team, producing detailed FF&E schedules, material sample submissions and 3D room visualisations for every room category and public space. A complete physical mock-up room was built and signed off by Kempinski’s regional quality director before mass production commenced — a non-negotiable step for a brand that maintains design consistency across its global portfolio.
- Custom Manufacturing (Months 4–9): All furniture was produced at Zhobai’s ISO 9001-certified Guangdong workshops. Each production batch underwent dimensional inspection, surface-finish durability testing per ASTM D4060 Taber abrasion standards, and fire-retardancy certification meeting both GB 17927 and Kempinski’s internal specification for contract upholstery. Smart-technology integration points — cable management channels, device housing recesses, charging pad interfaces — were fabricated to precise engineering tolerances and tested against the room’s technology specification before leaving the factory.
- Logistics & Vertical Delivery (Months 10–11): Delivering furniture to floors 29–53 of an occupied skyscraper in the heart of Guiyang’s CBD requires a logistics operation unlike any ground-floor hotel project. Zhobai coordinated with the building management team and the hotel’s operations director to schedule freight elevator slots during minimum-disruption periods, with dedicated floor coordinators managing the delivery sequence to avoid corridor congestion on active guestroom floors.
- Phased Installation & Snagging (Months 11–12): Working floor by floor across the tower, Zhobai’s installation team of 24 technicians completed the full fit-out over eight weeks. Each floor was returned to the hotel’s operational inventory within 72 hours of installation completion, passing Kempinski’s pre-opening room inspection protocol before accepting guests.
Result
The 2024 refurbishment repositioned Kempinski Hotel Guiyang as the definitive five-star address in Guizhou’s capital for a new decade — with updated furniture that meets the visual and functional expectations of today’s international luxury traveller while carrying the local cultural intelligence that distinguishes a great hotel from a generic one. Guest reviews since the renovation have specifically cited the room furniture quality, the desk-to-window view experience, and the bathroom double-vanity as highlights of the refreshed product. The hotel has maintained its top rating among Guiyang’s luxury properties on major travel platforms since reopening.
For Zhobai, the project represents a further milestone in our luxury-segment hotel furniture capability: managing a live-hotel refurbishment in a vertical property with complex logistics constraints, to the exacting specification of one of Europe’s oldest luxury hotel brands, delivered on schedule and on budget as a single, fully accountable FF&E partner.
Project Snapshot
- Project: Kempinski Hotel Guiyang (贵阳凯宾斯基大酒店)
- Operator: Kempinski Hotels
- Location: Nanming District CBD, Guiyang, Guizhou, China
- Scale: 366 rooms & suites; 2,400 m² meeting space; 4 F&B venues
- Scope: Full FF&E — guestrooms, suites, lobby, bar, dining, conference halls, banquet hall
- Timeline: 12 months from design to handover
- Completion: 2024 Refurbishment
- Rating: Five-Star
- Services: Design collaboration · Mock-up room · Custom manufacturing · QC · Vertical logistics · Phased installation
Planning a luxury hotel furniture refurbishment — including high-rise and technically complex properties? Contact Zhobai to discuss your FF&E requirements.
